About LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the World’s Largest Professional Network, is fast becoming one of the most important ways to connect (with employers, partners, mentors, former colleagues, employees, subject matter experts and clients) online. As such, the interactions which take place here (or which could but don’t) are increasingly important to understand. Even if you are not using it, other people, including your potential employers, probably are, so it is to your benefit to better understand the complexity and nuance of social interaction in this context.

What is LinkedIn About?
LinkedIn is about doing things like finding people and being found, discovering and creating opportunities. It is a place to be active, so that you show up on newsfeeds to stay top of mind with your network. It is about continuously cultivating your digital presence, and requesting introductions. To engage this dynamism, think about the progressive form of the verb – linking – not Linked, the stative form of the verb, which I argue contributes to the proliferation of misunderstandings about the site.

There are many things to do on LinkedIn, but as an interactional sociolinguist, I am principally interested in the role that language plays in accomplishing ends, and how LinkedIn in turn catalyzes and organizes language. Click here to read more about the Linguistics of LinkedIn.

What IS LinkedIn?Think of LinkedIn as a database.

For one thing, it contains myriad examples of professional self-presentation strategies. In the hands of a linguist, I cannot think of better data for learning about career and for presenting oneself professionally.

Company Pages contain many sources of information that are more easily found here than anywhere else and which are invaluable to the jobseeker.

Another good way to think about LinkedIn is as a self-updating rolodex. Better than paper rolodexes, this digital means of both capturing and facilitating connection can actively suggest your information for inclusion into others’ rolodexes, as it passively keeps track of people for you as they move jobs or change geographic location.

What is LinkedIn for?
At its core, LinkedIn is designed to help you network. Linguistically, it facilitates networking interaction in a number of ways: by helping you talk about yourself, by connecting you to other people in a way that facilitates conversation around similar (and diverse) interests, and by structuring an environment where asking for things is naturalized and foregrounded.

The basic action is the “request to connect.” Like “friending” on Facebook, this links you with another user. In so doing, LinkedIn also shows you how you are connected to that person (people who you know in common), “degrees of connection” in the nomenclature of LinkedIn. This helps you not only to maintain your network, but also do research to see how you might work to increase its density.